Full Week in Brasília

President Temer has been discharged from the Sírio-Libanês hospital, where he was admitted on Friday for a procedure to unblock three arteries. He will now need to beat the clock if he wants to smooth out things with his allies, finish his ministerial overhauls and approve the new social security bill by the beginning of December.

Meanwhile, Congress faces a busy week, as they analyze polemic bills that include weapon sales, the legalization of gambling and health insurance price increases. The debate on special privileges for elected lawmakers facing criminal charges will also continue this week.

Egypt Militants Attack Mosque in Sinai

At least 305 people were killed — among them 27 children — and 128 were injured in a terrorist attack on Friday that authorities are describing as Egypt’s worst attack by suspected Islamist extremists in modern times. The assailants arrived in five vehicles: between 25 and 30 gunmen carrying an Islamic State flag.

They positioned themselves at the main gate of a Sufi mosque and in its 12 windows and then set off explosives and sprayed hundreds of worshipers inside with bullets.

The president of Egypt vowed to respond with “extreme force” and “avenge our martyrs.”

Egyptian warplanes destroyed several vehicles used in the attack, killing their occupants, and also targeted suspected terrorist hide-outs containing weapons, ammunition, explosive materials and “administrative necessities,” the military said Saturday.

Melting Glacier Bonanza for Peruvian Farmers

A family harvesting flowers in the foothills of the Cordillera Blanca in Peru. Credit: Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Villages in Peru have been prospering because of the water flowing through the desert from a melting icecap high up in the mountains. Blueberries grow to the size of ping-pong balls in nothing but sand. Asparagus fields cross dunes, disappearing over the horizon.

The desert produce is packed and shipped to places like Denmark and Delaware. Electricity and water have come to villages that long had neither. Farmers have moved here from the mountains, seeking new futures on the irrigated land.

But the bonanza might not last much longer, and the farmers are beginning to worry what will happen when water levels fall. “If the water disappears, we’d have to go back to how it was before,” said one of the farmers. “The land was empty and people went hungry.” The flow of water is already declining as the glacier vanishes, and scientists estimate that by 2050 much of the icecap will be gone.

Amazon Recruits Indian Merchants to Lower Prices

Amazon, always on the lookout for ways to lower prices, has been aggressively recruiting Indian vendors to sell their goods directly on their American site. At least 27,000 Indian sellers have signed up since Amazon began the outreach two years ago. They range from giants selling watches on the site, to smaller firms marketing vegan tapestries, incense and handcrafted copper mugs. The result is lower prices for consumers by cutting out some of the usual costs of a traditional importer, and is also beneficial to Amazon, which gets to add to its enormous product lineup and charge sellers heavy fees.

For Indian merchants like Abhishek Middha, founder of The Boho Street, Amazon provides strategic access to the American market.

“Amazon handles everything in the U.S., from shipping to customer handling, so we can focus on making the best quality products and adding more products to our catalog,” he said.